


5 Lies 1 Truth

by Silex



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Ending, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Horror, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 13:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21253811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: In which Steve Burnside considers his escape from the events at the antarctic Umbrella facility and the normal, happy life that he's lived since then.





	5 Lies 1 Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HostisHumaniGeneris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/gifts).

**1**

Steve woke up groggy in the Arctic lab. He and Claire had nearly made it. It was so unfair, but he was awake, which meant he was alive, which meant…

The crazy Ashford bitch, the one responsible for all of this along with her psychotic brother, was there, standing over him. He was strapped to a table.

He could tell because when he tried to sit up he couldn’t.

She was ranting about something, experiments and revenge, while brandishing a syringe filled with something dark red that he really didn’t want to think about. Everything that had happened, everything that he’d seen, made it clear that whatever was in the syringe was bad news and that if he was injected with it…

He thought of what had happened to his own father, how many years of work for Umbrella to meet an end like that?

There was no time to think about that, not when her ranting was winding down and she was looking at him with manic intensity.

Steve struggled against his restraints, finding that there was just the tiniest bit of give to the strap holding his left arm. Not much, but it was something.

Twisting his wrist back and forth, struggling so hard that he worried he might dislocate something and then deciding that it didn’t matter if he did – whatever was in that needle was far worse, he watched her.

She leered down at him, gloating about what would happen to him, what would happen to Claire, once she injected him, just to see what the virus would do after incubating for so many years. It was her own strain, she said and that he should be honored that she was going to use it on him despite everything he’d done.

Without pause she went on to say that after the virus ran its course that she’d leave Claire to him, which made it obvious what she expected would happen.

He wasn’t going to let himself end up a zombie, or some sort of monster.

It hurt, the way his thumb twisted when he pulled his hand out of the strap, but fear and adrenaline had a hold of him and he didn’t feel it. There’d be time for pain later, but for now he had to keep up momentum.

He punched her in the stomach.

It wasn’t a good punch, because he’d never been in a real fight before, he was willing to admit that, and because he was strapped to the table, but it caught her off guard.

It couldn’t have hurt her, as much as he wanted to imagine it did, because he had a vague memory of her picking him up effortlessly earlier.

Somehow though it was enough, startling her enough that she dropped the syringe.

The glass shattered on the floor and she swore violently.

Anger getting the better of her, she slapped him across the face, and stormed off, failing to check if she’d actually knocked him out.

It had felt like getting it by a truck, not that he actually knew what that felt like, making his head spin and leaving him unable to see for what felt like an eternity, but he remained conscious enough to fumble with the restraints around his right arm and then his legs.

After that he wasn’t ashamed to admit that he ran, terrified that he’d run into her again.

He knew that he wouldn’t get lucky a second time and if she found him she’d kill him.

Or she’d have another syringe ready and…

**2**

Escaping the lab with Claire turned out to be the easy part. What followed was insanity. Her missing brother Chris returned from whatever anti-Umbrella mission he’d been on and between what Chris had found and what they’d been through there was no way for Umbrella to hide what it had done.

Everything from Raccoon City to Rockfort Island, to the Antarctic lab was dragged out into the open and revealed to the world.

The trial was surreal, a whirlwind of being asked to recount what he’d been through while having to reconcile how impossible it all sounded.

He got to meet Claire’s friends, the other Raccoon City survivors during it, learned how large a part she’d had in everything including her escapades at the French lab. How she managed to come out of that looking like a hero rather than the terrorist Umbrella tried to paint her and the others as was remarkable.

His own part of the story was far less impressive, all he’d done was be there. Knowing what everyone else had done the temptation to lie about minor details of his experiences, make himself sound better than he was, was enormous, but he held his tongue, swallowed his pride and told the truth.

He’d been an ordinary kid who’d gotten caught up in something so far over his head that he still didn’t know all of it. His story, the perspective of someone who wasn’t military, law enforcement, or just that amazingly skilled at everything the way Claire was, was what made it all work.

He had no agenda, no angle, no nothing.

He was a kid who’d been sent to some sort of secret, privately run prison and research facility for reasons that he still didn’t understand. Maybe he’d never understand. There was so much to try and take in and he knew he was only getting half the story, or less.

He didn’t even know what his dad did for Umbrella that got his whole family in so much trouble with the company and through the whole trial Steve had been dreading that it would come up, that he’d have to reconcile whatever his dad did for Umbrella with what he knew of the man.

It never happened though, for all that it had cost him, his own father was either too small a part of it all to come up, or all of his research had been lost, or hidden, or irrelevant.

There was some message in that about how deep the insanity went, how convoluted and illogical Umbrella was.

By the end of it Steve didn’t care, he was just glad for it to be over and get away from it all. What he wanted to do was forget that Umbrella had ever been a thing and live out a quiet, normal life, not thinking of what had happened.

There was a lot he didn’t know, he was resigned to that, but what he did know was that he didn’t want to be a hero. Leave that for people who didn’t flinch every time they fired a gun and didn’t panic when they heard something coming up behind them. Claire, her brother and her friends, they were heroes and they could be the ones to change the world, he just wanted to make it through it all.

Fortunately, just like from the start of it, Claire was there at his side through it all.

**3**

After the dust settled he and Claire talked things over, tried to figure out what they were going to do with their lives now that Umbrella was gone. Claire, of course, was worried that something of it remained, some trace of what the company had done lingered on and asked if he wanted to come with her and Chris to help stomp it out.

Steve thought about it long and hard, convincing himself that he did, meeting up with her at the airport where she and her brother were flying back to Europe.

At the gate he hugged her and then watched her leave.

He couldn’t follow, hadn’t even bought plane tickets because he knew.

He’d be useless.

The only reason he’d made it as far as he had was because of dumb luck and there was a point when that luck would run out and he had no skills to compensate.

For all the times he’d imagined himself the hero, convinced himself that Claire wouldn’t have survived if not for him, that his part in bringing down Umbrella was far larger and more active than it had been, he knew the truth.

It was all Claire and her friends, everything would have turned out the same if he’d lived or died.

So he watched her go.

She’d promised that she’d be back and that until then she’d keep in touch.

He watched her plane take off and vanish into the clouds and after that he watched the place in the sky where he’d last seen it.

Then he went home to think about what he was going to do with himself.

Finish high school, go to college, get a job.

All normal things because in the end he didn’t want to be a hero, as fun as that was to imagine.

He just wanted a normal life.

Something that proved harder than he’d expected.

**4**

There’d been no party when he graduated high school, two years older than his classmates in a school completely different than the one he’d been to back in Raccoon City. Strange classes, strange teachers, classmates he never bothered to learn the names of. There were times he tried to relate, tried to talk to them about normal things, but all they wanted to hear about was his adventures with Claire, the part he’d played in bringing down Umbrella. They wanted him to be a hero, but he wasn’t.

So he told them the truth and tried not to think too much about what he’d been through. Moving forward was what mattered, not dwelling on the past.

Because if he thought too much about what he’d been through, how helpless he’d been.

What had happened in the Antarctic lab…

Things fell apart. He couldn’t lie about what he’d done, but the truth was humiliating.

He still had nightmares about it, what would have happened if he hadn’t managed to escape.

If the Ashford bitch had managed to get him with that needle full of blood that he’d watched as she drew from her arm.

A thin line of steam had risen up from where she pulled the needle out and he could only imagine what it would have felt like when she plunged it into his arm, the way it would have burned as it rushed through his veins.

So he didn’t imagine what would have happened if he didn’t manage to break free and meet up with Claire and escape.

Instead he kept focusing on getting done with high school and getting into college.

At least getting into college proved easy.

Every college he applied to he got an acceptance letter from, because he was kind of a hero despite himself and he couldn’t argue that in an application letter. The only hard part was picking which school to go to.

They all offered him full scholarships, which was good because he had no money, or anything else really. The job he’d worked through high school was enough to get by, for groceries and the apartment he rented. There was some sort of settlement with Umbrella, but that was still caught up somewhere and he hadn’t seen a penny of it, didn’t think that he ever would at this rate. Besides, the actual amounts of money that kept getting tossed around as figures were too high for him to believe. Umbrella was a multi-billion dollar international company, something that even seeing it on paper wasn’t enough for him to wrap his head around it.

College at least wouldn’t be a concern financially. Yeah he’d have to work through it for money to cover whatever the scholarships didn’t, but after everything else that was hardly daunting.

In the end, despite offers from far more prestigious universities, all of which seemed to want him in their science programs, he went with a small state school and majored in business. Easier to keep out of the public eye that way, because newspapers and magazines still wanted interviews with him.

At least Claire kept in touch with him through it all. Having her to talk to when there was no one else kept him sane. She understood.

College was tough, a full course load and working again meant that there wasn’t much time to socialize. He made a few friends, mostly guys in the same classes as him and by the end of it all things were better for him.

When he graduated college there was a party, his friends, their families, and of course Claire. During his last semester she’d called to let him know that she was satisfied that there was nothing left of Umbrella and that she was going to spend a year in Europe backpacking and finding herself. Apparently she’d found herself sooner than expected and managed to make it back in time for his graduation.

It had been a shock to see her again after all this time, despite the weekly calls.

The moment he saw her there he knew, but he still forced himself to wait at least week, for things to settle down, for the two of them to agree that renting an apartment together would be fine, and for him to settle into his new job while she looked for one of her own.

He had to be sure that she wasn’t going to pack up and leave, like her brother had with her. Chris who he’d only met during the trial, and then at a distance, was still a large part of her life despite the way he was never around. Even traveling together they’d gone their separate ways and Steve could tell that to some degree Claire was torn, wanting to join Chris on his wanderings, feeling compelled to look out for him because she was the reasonable one.

When it was clear that she wanted to stay, that she’d decided that there was nothing wrong with settling down, Steve proposed to her.

It would have been wonderful if she’d said yes right then and there in the restaurant he’d taken her to, something just outside of their budget, but worth it.

Instead she’d waffled back and forth, weighing it carefully for so long that he was ready to give up. As much as she wanted to settle down, the fear was still there, that Umbrella would rear its ugly head again, or that something new would pop up in its place.

Did they really want to risk having a family when that might happen? When she might feel compelled to take off to save the world again, leaving him alone with their children, because despite her hesitation about actually starting a family she was firm in the idea that having kids would be nice.

Claire knew what she wanted, but there was so much that she felt responsible for and Steve knew that he couldn’t argue her out of it.

Wanting to save everyone, even the most helpless cases, was so much a part of who she was and that would never change.

So he let the idea drop and went on with things.

Work and life and just enjoying being together was enough that her indecisiveness didn’t weigh on his mind too much.

In face he nearly managed to forget until she called him at work one day.

It had been one of those weeks where little things just kept piling up so he expected that the call was because she’d come home for lunch and found that the dishwasher had flooded the kitchen again or her the funny sound her car was making had gotten worse and she’d need to use his while hers was in the shop. Hopefully the repairs wouldn’t be too expensive.

Instead she simply said “Yes.”

With no context it took him time to realize what she meant.

That day he used some of his sick time to leave work early.

The wedding ended up being a small, quiet thing, only a few close friends and what relatives of theirs could make it on such short notice.

**5**

Life went on and it was good. Maybe it wasn’t always easy, but things worked out.

Steve got promoted, Claire got a second part-time job and the house they talked about saving up for became a reality. The house was out in the county because Steve had decided that he was done with cities and Claire had never really been much of a city girl to begin with.

The location of the house and having a house in general brought with it new challenges, many of them unexpected, but the two of them managed.

Keeping such a large yard maintained was a lot of work, but they both chipped in and it worked out, even if there were times when he talked about not mowing it anymore and letting it all go wild.

Commuting in the winter was an adventure and the next car Claire got had four-wheel drive. One close call was more than either of them wanted and while the first time they got snowed in was a fun excuse to spend the whole day in bed, finding ways to amuse themselves, it quickly lost its novelty.

Spring came and he got to experience mosquitos and the joys of trying to mow wet grass.

Claire had laughed at him, offered to help, and then stopped laughing.

They fixed up the one room that they’d been using for storage, making it into a spare bedroom in case Chris decided to visit.

He never did and eventually the room got repainted again, cleaned out and converted into a nursery.

There was a bit of back and forth between them about what to name the kid. He’d said, jokingly that they should name their first Steve, after him. Claire had shot the idea down immediately, saying that it would be awful to do a thing like that to their child and that had made him stick to his guns, even as other names were discussed.

In the end, when their daughter was born, they both got what they wanted by agreeing on the name Stephanie.

A few years later her brother Mathew was born and serious consideration was given to putting a new addition onto the house. They had the money at that point and having room to grow wasn’t a bad thing, especially since Claire wasn’t sure if she was ready to stop at two kids. The idea of having a family appealed to her, stability for her children that she’d never had.

Dropping Stephanie off for her first day of kindergarten had been the moment where it all became real for him.

He had a normal life, a normal family, and nothing was going to change that. What he’d been through didn’t matter anymore.

The future wasn’t something to dread.

Their kids would have normal lives, none of the trauma he and Claire had been through would be a thing for them.

Time passed, holidays came and went.

Thanksgiving became a favorite, because he and Claire agreed that there was so much for them to be thankful for, so much that could have happened that mercifully didn’t and so much that might not have happened that they managed to make real.

It wasn’t always easy, but they were willing to put in the work.

One of the things that they put work into was convincing Chris to visit for the holiday. Usually he was busy with his own life or had an excuse, but this year Claire put her foot down. He was coming even if she had to get on a plane, grab him and drag him back with her.

Chris relented and agreed to show up, saying that he’d be bringing his girlfriend with him, a woman who until then Steve had heard about from Claire, but never met.

Usually Thanksgiving was just between the four of them, so having not one, but two additional guests meant that planning was in order.

Furniture in the dining room was rearranged so that a folding table could be put in the corner. Stephanie and Mathew were thrilled with the idea of having their own table, somehow coming to the conclusion that they’d be getting their own separate meal as well, complete with their choice of either a whole apple or pumpkin pie to themselves.

Steve bought the largest turkey he could find, and only after he got it home did Claire bring up checking to make sure that they had a roasting pan big enough for it and that it would fit in their oven. In the spirit of the season, Steve was thankful that when he checked it did fit in the oven and the next day went to the store to find a pan big enough for the bird.

Thanksgiving day was a flurry of activity, the kids helping Claire in the kitchen while Steve managed the last minute cleaning, putting away all of the toys that Stephanie and Mathew were supposed to have taken care of, as well as dusting all of the things that only got dusted when company was showing up, and making sure that they had enough clean dishes for everyone.

It was a race against the clock to make sure that the food would be ready in time, minutes ticking away until Chris and his girlfriend arrived.

The kids heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway and ran out to meet their uncle.

Steve followed after them, yelling for them to at least wait for Chris to get his car parked.

**1**

No tests were scheduled for that week. Left alone, the B.O.W. was doing what it usually did, alternating between crouching in the corner of the cell it was kept in, staring blankly into space, and sleeping.

Right now the massive, mottle green thing was asleep, laying on its side, sprawled out like it was dead.

Occasionally it would start to roll over, the jagged spines along its back scraping against the floor and then its legs would twitch, claws clasping at empty air or dragging across the floor.

One of the guards assigned to watch it that day, because ever since the thing had been retrieved from the Antarctic Umbrella lab during a salvage effort, it had been kept under constant observation, smirked when the thing let out a soft growl. It reminded him of watching a sleeping dog.

“What do you think it’s dreaming of?” the new guy he was supposed to be training wondered.

It wasn’t like much training was necessary with this thing. All it did was eat and sleep, unlike the hunters, which occasionally got out and caused trouble. Supposedly it had fought when they first got it, which was why it needed to be watched, but that was back before he’d been hired.

Answering questions, even stupid ones, was part of training the guy though.

“Dunno,” he shrugged, watching the way its feet kicked at the air, “Probably chasing something.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am a terrible person and I am okay with that.


End file.
